


As Infinite as Light and Air

by Ione



Category: Banner of the Damned - Sherwood Smith
Genre: All the permutations of love, Canon Compliant, Epistolary maneuvering, Found Families, Multi, Not Actually A Villain, Poly, ace - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:08:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28225875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ione/pseuds/Ione
Summary: Birdy comes back from his secret mission to discover that Emras is a prisoner—of their own side. And that she is being regarded as an evil mage by those who want very badly to interrogate him about that secret mission.He has to fix things for himself, for the people he loves, and for she he loves most.
Relationships: Birdy/Anhar/Keth, Nai/Takahiro (Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 7
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	As Infinite as Light and Air

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tricia868](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tricia868/gifts).



Martande Keperi—known to his intimates as Birdy—stepped from the ship onto Marloven soil, all the old tension gripping him. When he’d left, the kingdom had been on the verge of war, which might be the reason for his dreams to be so very _intense_.

These last few nights, the dreams had been mixed up with battles, the images based on that old tapestry he and the other scribe students had seen in that vast chamber when they were young.

He’d had a lot of time to think as he carried that weird dyr-thing away. Sometimes he’d wondered if it somehow wound its way into his dreams. But of course that was impossible. He’d never so much as cracked open the box it was stored in, much less touched it. At most he’d rattled it a couple of times, to make certain it was still there. The thought of its evil magic made him shudder—and when he remembered that Emras had carried it until she was worn to a wraith, believing herself safe as she did the kingdom’s work . . . it hurt.

He'd thought the dreams would end when he got rid of the dyr. But even on this journey home, safe in the knowledge that he had been successful in his mission, the dreams were still . . . unsettling. As if he were an eye, looking down at the world. In such compellingly realistic detail! One day Alarcansa, another Alsais. The third night, the Marloven capital. At other times he was . . . inside the people he knew, feeling what they felt, hearing what they thought. Always familiar people and places, so vivid and so visceral he sometimes woke in a cold sweat.

At least the damned dyr was gone now. And he was here, though as yet no one knew it—and he had no idea where or how anyone was. Emras had cautioned him about magic tracers, (however those worked) so he’d left his scrollcase with Anhar half a year ago. He’d tried hard not to worry about what he was leaving behind in Marloven Hesea during that long journey. That way lay madness. 

But those _dreams_ . . . sometimes they really seemed to carry over into waking life.

He surveyed the harbor. By now he knew better than to seek carriage hire. Marlovens did not ride in carriages. They rode horseback everywhere. The surprising thing was, their roads were nearly as good as Colendi roads. He’d learned something about roads, crossing the continent with Kaidas. Marloven roads were good, but not even remotely constructed to be scenic. They were either straight as they could make them, or followed the edge of some jarlate, usually alongside a river. It meant he could sleep under the stars, water the hired horse, and himself. Splash his face and start out again in the morning.

He pushed himself as hard as he could, swapping off horses at posts along the road. His chief dread was blundering into the middle of a war, seconded only by riding into a battlefield full of corpses.

Neither had happened by the time he spotted Choreid Dhelerei’s familiar towers jutting above the three hills that made up the Marloven capital. The sight filled his chest with buoyancy—it was almost like coming home.

‘Home.’ 

He’d given up the word as meaningless when he’d first returned to Colend, to find himself carelessly dismissed by the queen. But on this long journey, the word kept echoing, dragged to the surface of his mind by those forceful memory images.

Maybe now that he was done with his quest, the dreams would subside.

When he got close enough to see the sentries on the walls, the horse sensed his anticipation and sped up its pace. Or maybe it smelled the stable on the wind; the trot became a canter up the last distance, only slowing when they encountered a series of wagons.

He felt the gazes of the sentries rake him as he rode under the city gate. Such an alien concept, walls and gates around cities. He still wasn’t used to it after growing up in Alsais’s beautiful environment, bounded only by the winding canals and the peaceful river.

There was a second gate leading to the royal palace. He recognized one or two of the faces on the wall, and the still, warm summer air carried a voice, “Heh, one of the peacocks is back. Look there, that one actually knows how to ride.”

Birdy didn’t hear the response as his horse clattered into the enormous stableyard. He looked around—in vain—for Kaidas, then slid off the horse, shaking his legs as the two stable hands led the horse off for a cooling walk before being fed, watered, and groomed.

Birdy spotted one of the stable hands whose little brother had made friends with Vasande. He was going to call out, but the stable hand forestalled him, setting his wheelbarrow down. “You’re back!”

From lifelong habit Birdy’s hands came together in the Peace, then dropped as the stable hand blinked. “Where are Kaidas and Vasande?” Birdy asked.

“Queen sent them off to Sindan-An,” came the inexplicable answer. “She’s up in the state rooms,” he added.

Did that mean King Ivandred was out riding—or making war? Birdy thanked the stable hand and loped toward the tower entrance, but instead of going up the stairs, he shot on through the door to the inner courtyard that led to the service areas. Where would Anhar be at this time of day? Either on duty or visiting Keth Tlennen out at the bakehouse.

Birdy headed that way, having gained the impression that you didn’t go near the queen’s chambers unless summoned, and he didn’t want to risk passing Ivandred’s, which were right across the hall from the queen's. Birdy found Ivandred far too intimidating. He didn’t know what he’d do if the Marloven king demanded to know where he’d gone, and what he’d done with that dyr.

He found Keth Tlennen at the bakehouse, pulling long trays of biscuits out of the oven. The man looked up, and his somber face broke into a brief but genuine smile. “You’re back! Anhar will want to see you. She just took a load of washing up to the heir’s rooms.”

“Thanks,” Birdy said, and turned toward the nearest staircase, glad he’d made the right choice in coming to the bakehouse first. He liked Keth Tlennen, and sensed that the man liked him back; it might have been grief on his part (Tlennen’s wife had been in the army, and had died at that northern war, leaving both Tlennen and their small child) and homesickness on Anhar’s that brought them together, but their relationship had settled into a mirror of his own relationship with Anhar: each of them with a primary love that was beyond reach, Tlennen’s by death and Emras . . .

Long practice shuttered that thought away, amid an amalgam of emotions: yearning, a trace of grief for what could never be, but stronger, gratitude for what he had. He smiled as he crossed the kitchen courtyard, glancing up at the tall, narrow windows in the middle of the long row—the royal suite. All the windows were open, the shutters thrown wide. Emras’s tower was visible down to the right. He headed for the nearest staircase and vaulted up the stairs two at a time to the royal floor.

The guards passed him along, and a short time later here came Anhar, black braids flying, steps scudding as she hurled herself into his arms. “Birdy, Birdy,” she murmured into his chest.

He kissed the top of her head, then her face when she lifted it. “I’m back,” he said. “Why the tears? It was an easy journey. I never was in any danger. I was worried about all of you _here_. I hope you avoided another war?”

Anhar stepped back, her huge Chwahir eyes shifting back and forth between his own. “I . . . I . . .” she began.

He smiled, holding out his arms again. “I don’t expect half a year’s news at once. Is Emras holed up in her tower as usual? I ought to report to her . . .” His words trailed off when all the color in Anhar’s face drained away, leaving her eyes wide and stark.

“Anhar,” he said in a very different voice. “What’s happened to Emras?”

Her hands came up, palms out, fingers spread in the half-apologetic, half-pleading gesture of a Colendi forced to relate bad news. “Sartor,” she managed. “She’s in Sartor. A . . . prisoner.” She reached for his hand to draw him inside one of the queen’s side-chambers, as they were still standing in the middle of the long stone corridor.

“A _prisoner?_ ” he repeated, loud enough that the guards’ heads turned sharply.

“Come, come,” she said, towing him toward the door that one of the queen’s silent guards held open. “You don’t know all . . . you can’t know all.” And, as he stood there with his heart pounding and his blood thrumming in his ears, Anhar gave him a bare sketch of the intended attack for the glory of the Marlovens, the confrontation at Darchelde, the death of the six jarls. The magical explosion that had nearly collapsed that massive castle, and Ivandred and his First Lancers’ ride into Norsunder.

“The queen did not see this part, but we gathered it from a little Emras’s brother let fall—”

“He was here?”

“Yes—”

“He was here, and he did not bring Emras back with him?”

“He came to search Emras’s things,” Anhar said miserably. “What we learned was that Emras tried to duel by magic with that Hannik, or Herskalt, whoever he truly is, and did a thing that brought the Sartorans, as she’d promised—”

“The toe ring,” Birdy said. “I remember. So what you’re saying is, she did everything that was asked of her, and yet she’s a prisoner, and all of you let that happen?”

Tears filled Anhar’s eyes. But before she could speak, a cool voice interjected from behind: “No.”

Birdy and Anhar both jumped. For a Colendi to say _no_ so baldly was shocking. Especially in their home language.

Birdy whirled around to find Lasva in the doorway, her guards at her back. She was still beautiful—would always be that, Birdy noticed with the scribe-trained part of his mind that never stopped evaluating—but all the softness had been planed away from her features. She was very thin in her austere Marloven clothing.

“No. We did not ‘let that happen,’” Lasva stated, making a slight sign to the guards, who stepped back and resumed their places.

Lasva entered alone. “We told Olnar repeatedly that Emras sacrificed herself on others’ orders, that she never had ambitions for herself. He listened politely, but he never wrote any of our words down. He continued to search every finger’s breadth of Emras’s tower, as though seeking hidden things. And so Anhar here went to every one of the servants I brought back from Darchelde, and then to our own servants, and wrote their testimony, how hard Emras had worked, always to others’ orders. At cost to herself. She wrote down everything they said as they said it.”

“Not as well as a scribe would,” Anhar said, her voice trembling. “But I did my best.”

“You did an excellent job,” Lasva said. “I used all the moral suasion I could muster to force Olnar to take those papers with him when he departed. By magic. Leaving us with no means of communicating with Emras, much less any word of where she might be held. Or in what circumstances.”

Stung with remorse, Birdy made a formal Peace to both of them as he begged their pardon. Anhar darted forward, catching his hands. “Of course you’re angry,” she whispered. “We were, too. So very angry. But we could do nothing.”

Birdy slid his arms around her, fresh remorse burning through him when he felt her trembling against him. He looked over her head at Lasva as he said, “But _I_ can. I realize you have to rule here, and guard Kendred. I’ll go to Sartor—”

Lasva raised a hand. “They would love for you to do that,” she said quietly.

And Anhar mumbled into his dusty tunic front, “A lot of the questions Olnar asked were about _you_. They want that thing, that magical disc.”

“Badly,” Lasva added. “I was very glad I was able to say that you had gone beyond anyone’s reach, without any of us knowing where. If you turn up in Sartor, expect to be interrogated. Probably by magic, as they are _supposed_ to be against such things as torture,” she finished sardonically. “While there is no guarantee whatsoever that you’d be able to get anywhere near Emras.”

Birdy gritted his teeth. “Have you tried writing to her?”

“How would we get a letter to her?” Lasva asked. “The Marlovens have no diplomatic connections, as you know. I have been reluctant to send any of my people, as there is no guarantee _any_ letter would get to her, but every chance my person would be seized and put to whatever sort of questioning they would deem justified. We have no treaty protections against such things.”

“But I am a Colendi . . .” Birdy started, then stopped. Would Queen Hatahra even acknowledge him as one of her subjects if the Sartorans grabbed him? He certainly couldn’t claim to be carrying out royal orders.

Birdy realized the trembling was not just Anhar when she gently tugged him toward a cushion at the low table. He sank down heavily. “Olnar,” he repeated, casting his mind back to Colend and his time as a herald-scribe.

He’d learned something about Olnar back then—he’d made it his business to find out as much as he could about Emras’s family. He’d gained the impression of a humorless-seeming fellow (Emras was also humorless, or so many claimed. An error.) famed for his unswerving probity. Like Emras. The two had a lot in common, given the different paths they had followed.

He looked up. “Olnar did not give you a sigil for his scrollcase?”

“I tried to get one, unsuccessfully,” Lasva said. “It might be he was forbidden. It might be he did not want to cause an international incident. I don’t know. He was very terse with words, and very thorough in his search. But he did tell us that he was there when Emras was found, and that she’d been considerably bruised, deafened and bleeding from one ear, but otherwise all right. They put her in the healers’ care, and she was slowly recovering her hearing.”

Birdy considered the details. It hurt to think of Emras, who had been so frail when he last saw her, battered and bleeding. But her spirit was indomitable. And if Olnar was an eye-witness . . . “So that wasn’t diplomatic finesse. Not with the detail about her ears,” he said.

“That was I thought as well—the detail was reassurance that he truly had been there. He also said he would return and carry out Emras’s duties in replacement magic, which seemed irrelevant at the time, but once I’d had a chance to think everything through—there was a great deal of purely Marloven emergency to deal with as a result of the disaster at Darchelde—I wondered if he might be hinting that he would be watching over her. Or at least had made himself part of those in charge of her.”

“Ay-ye.” Birdy wound his fingers together with Anhar’s, aware of the tidal rush of comfort she was wordlessly trying to send. “We can test that. If you want to try to write a letter to her, I believe I know whom I can trust to get it to her. I think it would have to be from you, at least until we know more,” Birdy said.

Lasva’s mouth quirked. “Yes. Not as the Marloven gunvaer—that would gain me nothing, I know that much. For all their lofty pose of neutrality the Sartorans don’t trust Marlovens. They don’t like Marlovens. I’ll write as Princess Lasthavais Lirendi of Colend.”

Birdy bowed from his seat on the cushion.

* * *

Within two weeks after Lasva sent her letter via Birdy’s labyrinthine method, an answer came back. It was addressed to Lasva, who had departed on a diplomatic mission to the south, but it came to Birdy’s scrollcase.

He and Anhar stood together looking down at Emras’s familiar neat scribal hand. He reached to touch it, and smiled at Anhar.

“I think we got permission to write to her,” Anhar said, gently rubbing her belly; she was in the early stages of pregnancy by Keth Tlennen.

“Let me test it. What is permissible to a Colendi princess might not be to the rest of us,” Birdy said.

Anhar clapped her hands together wordlessly. “Emras will be waiting to hear that you’re back safe, I think.”

Birdy accepted that with a gesture; he had talked out all contingencies with Lasva before her departure. _I do think you should let her know you’ve returned safely,_ Lasva had said _. But be prepared for consequences_.

 _Oh, I’ve expected that all along_ , Birdy had answered. _Of course they’ll come to question me. But I’ll be here. I won’t go there._

To which Lasva had replied, _I still have three of those transfer tokens Emras made for Ivandred. Here’s my suggestion: begin carrying one in your pocket. If they do come, and they, in their moral superiority, try something, you can be gone in a flicker._

“It’s time for me to write,” he said.

Birdy forced himself to keep his first letter (which was a test) to what Emras needed to know most.

Emras’s answer, when it came, did not come via scrollcase. Olnar appeared with the letter in hand, as Birdy had expected. What he did not expect was two other mages, both older, both very serious.

They came quite properly to the outside of the city gate, and waited to be let in, but as soon as word reached Birdy that they were there, his heart gave a jolt and started thrumming. Like the military, mages were feared with reason. No matter what preparations you made, you could not guarantee that they would choose to regard the rules of social engagement accepted by everyone else.

While a runner escorted them to one of the interview chamber, Birdy readied himself, fingering the transfer token in his pocket. At least he had this one counter to their superior power.

The three entered, and only Olnar made the Peace, his gestures stiff and self-conscious. The two Sartorans, both older, wore mage robes. They merely stood.

Olnar pulled a scroll from a pocket in his robe. Birdy thought he recognized Emras’s writing on it. Anger boiled in his stomach; were these mages going to try withholding the letter unless he gave them what they wanted? He wished Lasva was present, but she had to be halfway to Totha by now.

Though what could she do against Sartoran mages . . .

Olnar glanced at his elders. They remained passive. Olnar stepped forward, and stiffly held out the scroll. “Keperi, we’ve brought a letter from Emras. You probably have been expecting us.”

“I have,” Birdy said, unsettled at having his expectations turned over. Or maybe it was Olnar trying to find common ground between his superiors’ demands and Birdy’s own situation; he sensed acute discomfort. “Thanks,” he added with a bow as Olnar placed the scroll in his hand.

The elder mage, perhaps impatient at these courtesies, spoke abruptly. “You are the man into whose hands Mage Emras surrendered the dyr, without consulting anyone else?” She had to be rising sixty; still, she flushed like someone much younger, apparently hearing in her own words not just anticipation but her very real sense of ill-usage.

Birdy had been a scribe and a herald too long to let his own ill-usage show. “The dyr was given to me by Emras, to dispose of by a spell that removed it beyond anyone’s grasp for at least three centuries, perhaps more.”

Silence met these words. Birdy suspected that they were considering Emras’s expertise, and deciding he wasn’t bluffing.

He added, “She does not know where I went. No one knows. No one _will_ know. I traveled without any magic whatsoever. I used her token and closed her spell around the thing. It’s gone.”

“Where?” the elder male barked. “Not in time. In place? Where did you leave it?”

Birdy remained silent, thinking back over that long journey. No fewer than five times he’d thought himself in a likely spot. Each time he’d decided he hadn’t reached a sufficiently powerful land—until one night his dreams were so disturbing he woke to a very different notion: he ought to find the _least_ likely place, not the most powerful. An unlikely place that still seemed stable, as well as easily overlooked.

The silence stretched as he fingered the transfer token.

The elder mages’ expressions congealed as they turned to Olnar. Who said, in Old Sartoran, “He is herald-trained, as I told you. He is trusted of two monarchs, in Colend and here. He understands privy secrets.”

The man made a sharp gesture and vanished. It was very clear that the white-haired woman was aware of her colleague’s rudeness as she reddened again, saying, “It is not what we would have wanted. You, herald, may have excellent training in diplomacy but you know nothing of magic, so you cannot know what a blow you dealt us in removing that object, the study of which might have afforded us some understanding of Norsunder’s inner workings. But done is done: there is no undoing a time-spell, not the type Mage Emras is capable of. We are finished here.”

She let out a long breath. “Speaking of Mage Emras. She is cooperating with us, other than in this one thing—which, we have to admit, happened before we met. Because of her willingness to cooperate, we have granted her a certain amount of freedom while we await judgment in the case. You may correspond with her as you will. The sigil is on yon scroll.”

Anhar spoke for the first time. “Which you will be reading?”

The mage turned her way. “That is the price a prisoner pays. If you had any understanding of what damage Mage Emras has done—yes, we know the circumstances, but ‘tis still done—you would perhaps better appreciate our lenience.” Her tone was soft, the rebuke all the stronger for it.

Anhar flushed and dropped her gaze.

Birdy hastened to speak, to draw attention from Anhar's hurt. “Thank you. Since we know nothing of magic, it doesn’t matter to us how many people will read our letters. We won’t be writing about magical affairs. Or political. I apologize ahead of time for how boring will be the inconsequentials.”

The mage bowed from the collarbones. Olnar made a surreptitious sign, which Birdy understood as _Well done—under the circumstances_ , and then the mages transferred away, leaving air to whirl around the room.

_My dear Emras:_

_Your letter is sitting in the queen’s chamber. She’s in the south trying to settle a peace treaty between some duchy or other. Jarlate, Anhar tells me. I still don’t really understand the difference, save that jarls are in some wise military governors and run private armies._

_We are in the midst of making preparations to go to Sindan-An to join Kaidas and Vasande, where Kaidas is serving as an interim governor—who does not have a private army. (One of the lancer battalions rides the border, Anhar says, overseeing that end of things.)_

_Anhar wants to bear her child in Sindan-An, with Keth Tlennen’s full approval. I plan to ride as escort until Tlennen can join us, once he’s trained one of his assistants in the making of Colendi pastries. I’ll let Anhar explain at the end of this letter._

_I will have a lot more to say once we reach Sindan-An. Are you comfortable? Do you have access to a library or archive? Are you well?_

_Birdy_

_Emras, this is Anhar. All Birdy’s questions are the ones I would ask. If I can send you anything, please say. I’ll find a way. I could go to Sartor if there are things you need that cannot go by magic. I don’t know how magic works, or what can or cannot be sent._

_I think you remember Keth, who makes Colendi pastries so wonderfully. He had a little daughter just learning to walk when you were with us. But you might not have seen her. You were always so busy in your tower. Keth wants his daughter, and our child, to be raised somewhere that doesn’t make army life a lure. Sindan-An, having lost its jarl family to war, is going back to its Iascan beginnings, Lasva says. Separating off from Marlovens without any revolution. They really like Kaidas there. His not being Marloven made him popular. Keth Tlennen (whose people are related to the Sindan-Ans way in the past) very much likes the idea of moving there. And so do I._

_What is Sartor like? Do they let you out? If they do, are there really statues all over? I don’t believe any city could be as beautiful as Alsais! I plan to have as big a garden as I can in Sindan-An._

_I will end here, so the paper will fit inside the scrollcase. Remember what I said about anything you would like to have!_

_All our love, Anhar_

Birdy’s first, very short letter broke the frozen wall inside Emras. She wept until her watchers were concerned for her, causing Greveas and Olnar, who had volunteered to be her advocates (though she did not know it) drop their work and rush to the Mage Council building deep in Sartor’s central, or royal, district.

The duty scribe showed them the log, which included the text of Birdy’s letter. Olnar’s mouth tightened, and he said, “That’s the one who took the dyr.”

And they’d vanished again, without giving the duty scribe any advice. So, without any orders, he let Emras cry it out. It took a very long time, after which she sat at the window without eating for a day.

They called the healer in. After a noncommittal conversation with Emras (“Are you ill?” “I am fine.” “Is there anything you need for your well-being?” “Thank you for this window. It’s sufficient.”) they said to watch for further letters from this Martande Keperi, for they might have to intervene if their prisoner became incapacitated before they unlocked the knowledge they sought so desperately from her skull.

But after that, Emras smiled whenever she received letters from Birdy and Anhar. And she received them often—sometimes every day, most regularly three times a week. All tediously boring, filled with names no one knew and had no interest in once they’d discovered that none were mages, but more like servants or artisans, children, pets. There was a great deal about the kittens of the Marloven queen’s cat. And about gardens.

It could almost be surmised that the tedium of these letters were intentional except for the effect they had on Emras. She never failed to brighten after reading them, and smiled as she went about the task of writing her defense.

This demonstrable lift in her spirits was noted, and as time went on, and the letters from Birdy and Anhar remained as full of tedious detail—without any reference whatsoever to world events—the censors, being human, began scanning more hastily, and as a year turned into two years, a single glance per letter was deemed suitable.

Emras faced judgment at last, was enjoined to reproduce Adamas Dei’s ward text, after which she was permitted to study magic within the Sartoran school, but she was forced to begin with the children. She referred lightly to those things in her letters, as the stream of cheery reports coming back never ceased: babies were born (first to Keth Tlennen, and then to Birdy); a few pets inevitably became many pets; the house they had chosen, an easy morning’s ride from the Marloven castle where the local border guards were garrisoned, had to be enlarged, its surroundings planted with trees, shrubs, flowers.

Five years after her imprisonment, Emras was summoned before the mage council, and told that she had been sentenced to ten years of restitution. The five years she had already spent counted for nothing; the ten would begin once she was sent to her first station along the coast, to begin the task of magical repairs.

She returned to pack up her belongings, and found a last letter—from Lasva, saying that she was about to move to Sindan-An.

So many changes.

Emras looked up at the sun at its low arc as winter came on, thinking wearily of those ten years.

She placed the compromised scrollcase on the desk before the mages before she transferred out.

* * *

Her first assignment was in Ghael, north of Anaeran-Adrani.

Emras was mildly surprised to see an established mage her own age, after so long being the youngest scribe, the youngest this or that. She felt as if her own aging had halted somewhere along that first journey west with Lasva the newly-married Marloven princess, but of course time never stops. Except in Norsunder.

She tried not to think about Ivandred as she unpacked her necessities from her trunk in the cheerless tiny room she was given. The mage was rigidly polite, making it plain that if she had personal friends, Emras was never going to number among them.

Emras accepted that as she had accepted every blow these past five years. Since the sun was already sinking, she was given leave to explore her surroundings, with it understood she would begin her labors the next day.

The town was small, overlooking a bay in which ships rode at anchor on a gray sea under a gray sky. She climbed up a winding path past tough grasses stubbornly resisting the approach of winter, and peered over the jumble of slanted roofs below.

The rising wind blowing off the sea chilled her. She shivered, rubbing her hands up her arms. She sensed a bleak mood knotting inside her chest, matched by the bleakness of the scene; she scolded herself with a reminder that the weather was just weather. Another day it would be beautiful, the sky and sea blue, she scolded herself. The sea! She had never thought to see the famous Elgaer Strait, and she remembered Inda in the Fox record snorting as he predicted the name would never last.

She turned to start back down the path to that cheerless room, to face a no-doubt equally cheerless meal, when the armband she would have to wear the remainder of her life tingled, like an insect walking over her skin: a tracer.

She stilled, dreading the sudden appearance of the Herskalt—or Ivandred—as the fir scent of light magic ruffled over her face and there stood . . .

_“Birdy?”_

Birdy was very much a man now. But, reassuringly, there was his old grin as he held out his arms. “It’s me!”

Emras didn’t think. She walked straight into his grip, and his arms closed around her for a loving hug, blessedly brief. He let go immediately; she was not to know that that weird sense he’d discovered after his trip almost five years ago had settled into an acute sensitivity to others’ moods. Even their thoughts, in an inexplicable mixture of sensory images and emotions, rarely words.

So he knew exactly when to let her go. His reward was Emras’s own sweet, unshadowed smile that never had had any hint of sexual warmth, and never would have.

“How did you find me?” she asked, eyes wide with happiness and wonder. “Who sent you?”

“I sent myself,” he said as he stooped down to pick up some pebbles. To keep any hint of awkwardness from spoiling the moment, he began juggling as he spoke. “I’ve learned magic. Oh, don’t worry, there’s no sinister Herskalt lurking in the background. In spite of their desire to control all the magic learning in the world, the Sartorans don’t, in fact. There’s a mage school in the north, that I learned about through scribe connections. I’m the veriest beginner, but all I really wanted to learn were a couple of things. This being one.”

He juggled with one hand, plunged the other into the pocket of his robe, and pulled out a plain scroll case. “I made it. For you. So you can write to us, or whoever you want, and nobody else will be reading it. I also learned how to make transfer tokens.”

“That is _not_ beginner magic,” Emras said, laughing unsteadily as she thumbed her stinging eyes.

“Yes—ah-ye! I sort of went ahead in that regard. I can’t help it. We scribes are so much better at studying and memorizing. What they promised would be daunting lessons was no worse than all the memorization we had for years and years when we were really small. Anyway, I quit once I got what I wanted. There’s too much to do at home.”

“Home,” she repeated.

His smile became pensive. “It really is home, though I do not own the land, or the house, or very much in it. I finally figured out that home, for me, at least, is people instead of a place. We have a room for you in . . . we’re thinking of calling it Vasande, after Kaidas’s boy, who everyone loves. He was learning . . . well, anyway, the new name is Vasande Leror, to harken back to the locals' Iascan roots. Only here’s a typical irony of life: no sooner had we decided to call the province Vasande when Vasande himself had to go back to Alarcansa. But Kaidas, or Lasva, can explain all that.”

“Ten years, Birdy,” Emras whispered.

“I know. The room will wait. Though Kaidas wants to know what you’d like painted on your walls. After the ten years pass, it will be yours to visit, or to live in, or just to store books in. Whatever you like,” Birdy said, his gaze steady. “We _all_ want you there. Which reminds me! A letter, from Lasva. This one is a real one, I gather—she wanted me to hand it to you, once you were safely away from those Sartoran nosers.”

He tossed down the stones and dug into the other pocket, pulling out a sealed paper.

Emras was still shivering, but no longer from the cold. Happiness flooded her heart, overflowing into her veins, a sensation of golden light. “Birdy, I don’t know what to say!”

“You don’t have to say anything! I realize that you can’t transfer places without them knowing, but that doesn’t prevent any of _us_ coming to see you whenever you want. I’ve learned that much. And we will. Anhar wants to make sure your nails are nice, and she wants to bring you pastries. We can write, too. Ten years won’t be so bad if all of us share it.” He chuckled. “And we can write about anything. No more letters about pet food and toddlers’ first words. Unless, of course, you enjoy them.”

“I enjoyed everything,” Emras said. “Everything. So all those details were a campaign, then? I wondered.”

“Oh they were indeed. We had fun trying to think of the most trivial details to flood your censors with, to make them regret not trusting you. And so that they wouldn’t keep you from letting us know where you were. See, it worked!”

He sensed her nearing tears again, and grinned. “You’re cold. I’ll wager you haven’t had supper yet, or anything warm to drink. I’ll get myself back—my own supper is waiting, and oh, I look forward to your first taste of Keth’s cooking. He’s been learning all kinds of recipes.”

“Do go back, then. I won’t keep you. Take my greetings to all, and my thanks,” Emras said.

He transferred away, leaving her to make her way down the path in a far different mood than the one she had borne climbing up.

She tucked the scrollcase and the letter into her robe, and when she reached the mage house, she smelled braised fish and seasoned vegetables. She found her share in a clay pot with a cover to keep it warm. So the mage preferred to be alone—or to dine without her company.

That was fine. Emras carried her food to her little room, and sat down at the small desk to eat and to read.

_Dear Emras_

_I have been planning what I hope to be my last Convocation. Kendred is young to take over as king, but he's been making more decisions, especially the last year or so, and the Marlovens have accepted them. He looks very much like his father, and the reverberations from the deaths of the six jarls are still resounding through the kingdom. It helps that three of the jarls were replaced by boys around Kendred’s age, all of them known to him in the Academy._

_It also helps that their mothers, and aunts, and grandmothers, have held the kingdom together by their tireless writing of letters, which has nothing to do with riding around with spears aslant and swords at their sides—though everyone knows those are always in reach of the crown._

_I remember you and I once, long ago, had a conversation about greatness. Several conversations, in fact, over the years. I don’t remember what foolishness I spoke then. What I can tell you now is, I believe I know what greatness is. Or what one facet of it is: perhaps the concept is like light in a diamond, ever refracting and illuminating._

_I have been recopying Hadand’s letters, in case something happens to those that managed to be preserved in spite of all the changes in the royal palace, and throughout the kingdom. I have come to the conclusion that it was Hadand Algara-Vayir Deheldegarthe, and not Evred Montrei-Vayir (or even poor Inda, who after all was simply a war commander, following orders), who achieved true greatness during the days of Iasca Leror._

_One could say that the despicable Fabern destroyed everything Hadand built, and so it would seem, except that all those things that Fabern got rid of in order to pursue her own pleasure turned up again. Like the Yvanavairs, so proud of their heritage—though they actually lost their lands during the Olavayir years after Fabern’s mis-rule, and their name. But lo, three generations later, when the Olavairs in their turn lost the throne again, there were the Yvanavairs, back again._

_So it is with Hadand, only to a greater extent: the framework that she built with her constant letter-writing had so strong an impact that even after Fabern tried to destroy that framework, those woman taught their daughters about the great days under Hadand, and those daughters taught their daughters, and granddaughters._

_When it came to my attempt to re-establish that network, it worked not because of my carefully designed scrollcases, or my supposed peacock charms, it happened because those women had inherited the idea of that framework. It already existed in their minds, connected to Hadand’s name. I merely gave them the means to reseed it, and all I really had to do was step back and let it grow._

_Now_ that _is greatness._

_During this past year, I have worked to recopy those letters, which Birdy says he will archive in case anything happens to the originals in Marloven Hesea. And soon I will be merely a memory, the peacock gunvaer, as the Marloven life I truly never really understood goes on._

_As for me personally, I have been talking with Birdy during his magical studies. We both remember what happened to you, thinking you had stepped away for a day and returned after nearly a year. Poor Ivandred, who never deserved it, has to be caught in the same way beyond time, if he still lives. He would never of his own choice leave Marloven Hesea to itself. His being gone five years might translate to fifty years, or more like five hundred years before he is able to return. If he is. Impossible to guess. But dead or alive he is beyond time, and so even Kendred agrees that my ring vow has ended._

_Kaidas has waited faithfully. I believe we have earned what happiness we can find._

_Ah! Birdy says he wants to leave to find you before the day gets too late, and that from now on there are no censors to be frowning over my frivolous words._

_All my love from your fellow peacock—_

_Lasthavais Lirendi_

* * *

At first no one in the household could figure out why Birdy rushed around full of smiles as he supervised a better-than-usual housecleaning. That is, until he himself went in to dust and inspect the room they had all agreed would belong to Emras, when she was free.

“Ten years gone! In some ways it feels like ten days, and in others, like ten centuries,” Anhar said to Keth Tlennen as she smeared a crushed olive on a baking pan for nut-rolls. “Do you think those Sartorans will truly free Emras?”

That was a rhetorical question if ever one was asked, they both knew very well. Keth Tlennen would have no idea how things operated in Sartor, so far across the Sartoran Sea. But he growled, “They’d better.”

Anhar smiled happily, reassured.

Upstairs, Lasva and Kaidas were settling their youngest down for a nap before Kaidas had to ride up to the castle to begin a day of what he called “princing.” As Kendred, on marrying recently, now had a gunvaer, Lasva had said there was no need for her to retain her Marloven title. In his turn, he insisted that his mother take back her old title—and she being a princess, Kaidas must be a prince, which made Vasande Leror an official principality.

Kaidas had accepted his elevation with a shrug. Through his life, he’d worn various titles, including Assistant Stable Hand. Another title was like wearing a different hat.

Over the small bed, Lasva and Kaidas smiled at one another, their happiness humming on so deep a note that Birdy sensed it from below, and smiled to himself. He had gotten close to Kaidas during their time together. It secretly amused Birdy that Kaidas, for all his wild reputation and those infamous lovers' cups, was perhaps the most monogamous person he'd ever met. Sometimes Birdy wondered if anyone else could sense how, in coming together at last, these two broken souls had healed, their joy ramifying outward like sunshine in the realm of the spirit.

Unaware of thoughts Birdy would never share, Lasva glanced at the window. Seeing the late autumn slant of light, she exclaimed, “ _That’s_ why Birdy is charging around. Emras’s ten years is up this year, is it not?”

Of them all, Kaidas had the least experience with Emras. He only remembered her as a slip of a thing at the back of the fan drills for a brief time, and hadn’t she been one of the staff at the royal palace in Alsais?

But he’d been hearing her name all these years now, and of course he knew her history. So he smiled back, saying, “We’ll have to celebrate.”

“ _If_ they truly let her free,” Lasva said.

Far away, in Sartor, Emras sat across a table from her brother. Greveas and a few elder mage council members stood silently in the background, their formal robes a silent reproach. Rather their garb and their demeanor were meant as a silent reproach, a reminder that Emras would never be one of them.

She had spent all these years hiding the fact that she didn’t care.

“You have completed your stipulated service,” Olnar said in his most even, detached voice. “You are free to go. We have removed the tracers on your armband, though the wards remain.”

The tone didn’t matter. She hadn’t expected anything else. The thing that hurt unexpectedly was his diffuse gaze, and the lack of personal words after: there was no invitation to go to Colend to see his wife and daughter.

Emras rose.

No one spoke. She suppressed the impulse to give them a shadow-kiss by transferring in front of them, and headed quite properly for a Destination chamber. So Olnar had chosen the mage guild over family bond. It was to be expected; he had brought her home for Father's birthday one year, at the request of their mother. It had been an uncomfortable visit. The niece, who looked so much like Tif, had been studying soberly—at scribe history, not magic. But she’d been wary of Emras, which Emras had tried without success to overcome. Too many warnings about her wicked past, clearly.

Emras looked around the clean marble lines of the outer chamber, knowing that under other circumstances she might have been happy here. But she was forever marked as criminal, avaricious, next thing to Norsunder.

She wondered if the Herskalt ever thought about her.

She hoped he did not, and shivered as she glanced through a tall window at the spires of Sartor’s ancient royal palace, through which the Herskalt, under another name, had once walked millennia ago, according to the records. It was impossible to guess the thoughts of someone like that.

One thing for certain, the Sartoran mages had triumphed.

Or assumed they had.

As she waited in line to use the Destination, she remembered that the original Adamas Dei text had mysteriously vanished not long after her imprisonment. Her own defense was locked away in an archive available to few. On the surface the Sartoran Mage Council had triumphed, but she was very certain that she had, without ever intending to, rocked their complacency to the foundation.

And that could only be a good thing.

It was her turn. She transferred to her parents’ house, because that was duty. And they were glad to see her—her mother searching her face anxiously, then smiling at last as she welcomed Emras in. There was no judgment in their faces. They were just glad to see their child, however she might have erred. But that same bond kept Emras from giving a true answer to their “How have you been?” She would not distress her parents with situations and emotions they had been helpless to fix since Emras had reached adulthood, and so she accepted dainty Colendi snacks as she spun out a bright version of her life since she’d seen them last.

When the pear cider had been drunk and the plate was empty, Mother said, “Can you stay?”

Emras saw that she hoped, but didn’t expect; the absence of Olnar and his family from what otherwise ought to have been a family celebration of Emras's return was a reminder that Emras’s influence must be kept from their precious grandchild.

So she said, cheerfully, “My old classmates are expecting a visit. I still have my scrollcase—I can come any time you invite me.”

Her parents both hugged and kissed her, and her mother whispered, “They warned Olnar not to have you back. Let some time go by, and you will be most welcome, I promise you.”

Emras did not say that she'd suspected that, nor that Olnar had still made his choice. Magic was his life, and she could accept that, as she'd once made the same choice. She gave them her best smile and took her leave.

She was technically free to go anywhere in the world, but those words Birdy had said ten years ago about _home_ and _people_ had stayed with her. She had to know if maybe she could have a home after all.

She drew a deep breath, and transferred to the Destination that Birdy had given her.

Back at Princess Lasva’s house, Birdy tried, unsuccessfully, to occupy himself with work. But he stayed near the windows overlooking the garden where he’d made the transfer Destination.

He’d just scolded himself for yet another glance not five breaths after the last when Keth and Anhar’s eldest called, “Someone is coming up the garden path!”

And there she was.

Birdy raced downstairs, to find Anhar and Keth coming out of the kitchen, Anhar wiping her hands on a towel. Lasva appeared from the library.

Birdy said, “Remember, no words about staying. Or going. Let’s not put a cage of expectation or obligation around her.”

Anhar stepped forward and laid her hand against his cheek. “Be easy, sweeting,” she said softly. “It’ll be all right. Truly.”

Birdy stared down at her, biting back an anguished _How can you know?_

Then Lasva said, “Do we let her knock? That is a kind of message—”

But then the children threw open the door and scampered out, gamboling and staring as children will at a newcomer. “Are you Auntie Emras?” piped a small one.

“Where did you come from?” asked another.

“Do you like nut-rolls?” queried a third, getting to what was most important. “We have some _just_ for _you_. But we can’t touch _any_ until you get yours.”

“Well,” Emras said, “we’ll have to ask for those nut-rolls right away, won’t we?”

The small, beautiful face brightened like a flower in a spring rain. Emras thought, this child had to be Lasva’s, and then she looked up, and there they all were, smiling with welcome.

Birdy was first, hands working as he juggled an assortment of oddments. She understood now that he did that to avoid awkwardness, because he was so tactile a creature. She reached out and patted his shoulder, then laughed to see him flush like a boy.

“Come!” He caught all his objects on his palm, and extended his hand toward the door. “Let’s show you around.”

Emras entered a home that smelled like fresh baked goods. Everywhere was color—twined flowers and birds painted up the doorframes, the newell, around the windows—children and their toys, vases full of dried herbs still retaining their color, and one vase full of the last roses of the season.

She let impressions roll over her as voices spoke on all sides: she would put names to faces later. Parlor, dining chamber, kitchen, bath room and laundry off the kitchen, fed by a well, and then there was the library . . .

“And here is your room, between the library and Kaidas’s studio—he needs those south windows for the light. Your room has one south window, and one west window that looks into the garden,” Birdy said in a rush of words, watching her face for the minutest change.

Emras stood quietly, taking in the large, airy chamber. A pretty desk, her own bookcase, bed trunks—space for them all. She turned around slowly, arms out, enjoying how her fingertips touched only air.

Then a horrible thought. “Please don’t tell me it’s the largest room,” she said, turning to Birdy.

“This is actually one of the smallest rooms. The largest is Kaidas and Lasva’s, upstairs,” he assured her. “We have plenty of space at the other end of the house, where the children are. We thought this room, which was originally a study, would be quieter. See, that door goes straight into the library.”

Emras thought of the tiny cubbies she’d been assigned over the past years, some having really been closets. One time an attic with just a bare pallet, another time a basement, where she'd made a makeshift bed on a table to avoid the dank floor. All silent reproaches to be endured, as had been the deliberate formality and cold politesse. Except for one, whose friendliness had presaged questions, uttered in an increasingly avid voice, about how much power she’d had, and how it felt to destroy the enemy with a spell . . .

That one she’d felt obliged to report on her yearly visit to Olnar—though she had no idea what, if anything, had been the result.

She shook off the memories, as Birdy said, “Did you see your family?”

“I did.” And braced herself to be asked, quite reasonably, if they had invited her to resume living with them, and what did that mean?

But Birdy did not ask. “I suppose they offered you good things to eat, and of course you complied, and aren’t the least bit hungry. Do you think you could force down a nut-roll or two?”

Emras laughed, and the moment passed, leaving her to feel her way cautiously into this new circumstance. “Of course I can! I remember those nut-rolls. We couldn’t get better in Colend.”

“That’s because Anhar brought back the recipe from one of her friends at the royal palace in Alsais,” Birdy said.

“I didn’t know,” Emras said. “I should have known. There was so much I didn’t know during those fraught days. I have difficulty even remembering them. Except in dreams,” she admitted.

“It’s over,” he said. "You're here, I hope for good. But that's for you to decide," he added in haste.

They left the room to rejoin the others, leaving the little awkward moment behind them. Anhar brought out food and drink—all Emras’s old favorites. This thoughtful touch, the way Emras caught their quick glances to see if she was pleased, made her throat tighten and her eyes sting. She did not know what to do with these little signs of care—especially when she had done nothing to deserve them.

So she did her best to be convivial, matching names to faces in the children, and looking at pets, drawings, toys, and propriety spots out the window (that’s _my_ pear tree, _that’s_ the peach tree Mama Anhar and Mama Lasva planted, over there you can just see Mama Anhar's mulberry forest, for the silk worms she brought from Colend, have you ever seen Colend?), and she listened to the details of local news, chattered in three languages—Colendi, Marloven, and Iascan. But while she appreciated everything she saw, heard, touched, the thought would not be banished: she had been invited, and welcomed, but how long would she be a guest?

More specifically, could the chasm between guest and truly home be bridged, and if so, how?

This question was beginning to oppress her when Birdy clapped his hands, declaring that the children needed to bathe and get ready for bed. Over his shoulder he said to Emras, “It’s the small ones first, then us. Mornings, that room is dedicated to laundry, which takes a lot of hot water,” he said apologetically, miming pumping the well and then pouring water into a cauldron to heat. “You can have first bath after we get the children done.”

And suddenly Emras knew how she could un-guest herself. “That,” she said, “I can fix. If you’d like a cleaning frame. And a wand for hot water, though that will take a little time to draw sunlight into it.”

Birdy’s eyes widened. “Emras, I completely forgot you could make those things. Oh, wait till I tell the others.”

She grinned, the first real grin he’d seen in years. “Let me surprise them. And begin as I mean to go on: tomorrow, I shall go back to wearing my scribe robes. I earned those, and no one can take them from me. But I can be the local mage, fixing whatever magical things need fixing . . .”

That is what I’d missed, Birdy thought later, as the house settled down for the night. He lay with Anhar’s head pillowed on his shoulder as he gazed at the dim blue moonlight in the window.

“Birdy?” she said sleepily.

“Emras needs to be needed. Why didn’t I think of it? Here we were, falling over ourselves to treat her like a queen, and I could see it pressing down on her.”

“I could have told you that,” Anhar murmured against his ribs. “I’ve already thought of a whole list of things Emras might enjoy doing. It’ll all work. You’ll see.”

Birdy nodded, smiling into the darkness as he imagined Emras now occupying that pretty room downstairs, that all of them had helped put together. Deep contentment shimmered through him: he had all his beloved family under a single roof at last.

Home.

**Author's Note:**

> Drawing not only on _Banner of the Damned_ but on _Hunt Across worlds_ and _A Time of Daughters_ as well as _Inda_.


End file.
